Facebook is testing a new tool that encourages users to set the social networking site as their browser homepage. It's hardly an unusual move. But at a time when the company is rolling out its own email service and resisting efforts to loosen its grip on user data, the move serves as an apt metaphor for Facebook's sweeping ambition.

A study conducted among software engineers indicates that a high proportion of coders suffer from "severe insomnia" and that a majority have sleep problems of some sort, putting their mental health and "hygiene" at risk.

There's a lot of information you'd want to replicate that wouldn't have been mission critical even two years ago. But you can't, because you have three incompatible storage systems, no budget for an extra data centre and no staff to run it if you did.

I took a look at the 11.6in MacBook Air for Reg Hardware almost a day after the new line-up of skinny Macs was announced. I've now had a chance to use one in earnest - and benchmark it - to see if my initial thoughts are born out by longer term usage.

This is a story about politics and intrigue in business. It’s about the formation and early years of Symbian – a company created by the industry's giants to create future mobile devices - and it reveals stories and plans that have never previously come to light. The issues raised here are alive today as ever. This piece looks at how Symbian was formed, and is an appetiser for the main course, the formative early years of the company.

In a world where it is possible to create credential-stealing malware and where users are supposed happy to trade passwords for a bar of chocolate in a railway station survey, we ask the question: is the era of password authentication coming to a close?

Mention robots and most people envisage the future, but some have been around longer than us. George the Robot is one such android and has found a new home in the National Museum of Computing after 60 years of hibernation in a galaxy far, far away his maker's shed.

Sometimes, people suggest that military boffins are a waste of the taxpayers' money. They either develop hideous weaponry calculated to increase the amount of misery in the world, or fool about inventing pointless gadgetry which wastes our soldiers' time.

It seems odd to complain of a sense of déjà vu when playing a sequel, especially when the game in question is the third in a highly successful series. But when that déjà vu pervades through twenty hours of gameplay, as it does in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, it's difficult to ignore an overriding sensation that comes to define the experience.

A veteran auto-plant worker faces an extended spell behind bars after pleading guilty last week to stealing industrial secrets, including design blueprints, from car maker Ford and passing them on to a Chinese rival.

The government’s plan to bring management of its online services under the roof of the Cabinet Office has left the future of the Directgov CEO job, which was surprisingly vacated by Jayne Nickalls just last week, in doubt.

A growing number of companies are spoiling for a fight between the ARM and x64 architectures in the data centre. The latest one to enter the ring is ZT Systems, a maker of low-powered servers that has just launched its first ARM-based server.

SpaceX, the upstart startup rocket company bankrolled by famous PayPal nerdwealth hecamillionaire Elon Musk, has received the first ever commercial licence permitting the re-entry of spacecraft into Earth's atmosphere from orbit. The chit will permit the firm to carry out an imminent test of its new "Dragon" capsule.

For the second time in a month, Google advertisers are complaining of a sudden drop in "quality scores" on the company's AdWords platform, and some say this is forcing them to pay more for the same ad placements.

Google has sacked Randy Wigginton — a software engineer who was employee number six at Apple — for leaking Eric Schmidt's memo announcing a company-wide pay raise and bonus, according to a report citing a "well-placed source close to Google."